The Innocent and the Beautiful
by Hoshi-tachi
Summary: An experiment gone awry lands Duo in a strange, strange place... and time. Future slash, profanity, mentions of violence.
1. Crash

**Title:** The Innocent and the Beautiful

**Author:** hoshi-tachi

**Rating:** T

* * *

He was never going to get used to the collars. Never, ever. Even if they hadn't been uncomfortable as hell, getting used to the collars equaled getting used to the uniforms that sported them. The same uniforms that meant he, along with the others, was now recognized as a legitimate representative of the government.

Duo Maxwell, a government lackey. No way in hell was he ever going to let that sound in any way natural…

A low chuckle came from his left as the ex-pilot ran a finger beneath the bit of starched cloth. "Ease up, kid, they're not that bad," Howard rumbled good-naturedly, glancing up for a moment from his data pad.

Duo mock-glared at him in return. "And yet I don't see you wearin' one." The elevator doors opened with a quiet _ding_, revealing a bustling hangar.

Howard snorted with laughter as he waved his young friend outside. "That's 'cause I'm the hired help, not a poster boy for the new peace. They ain't going to make a grizzled old mechanic like me try to look pretty for the cameras, even if I am their head mechanic."

The American gave him a real glare this time. "Did you have to remind me? There's another one of those damn press conferences Friday. They want to know about that drug ring we broke up last week…"

Together they moved through the hangar, making their way around personnel and stacks of equipment and parts with the ease of long practice. "But I thought that bust was Barton's work?" the mechanic pointed out with a frown. "Why are they calling you in?"

Duo snorted, transferring his glare to his feet. "You kidding? You ever seen Tro' with the press? The guy clams up even tighter than when he ain't with them. And Heero and Wufei are even worse. Heero always ends up reaching for his gun and Wu-man loses his temper with all the stupid questions we get asked. Une's learned to call in me or Quat' whenever the press wants a look at 'the reformed terrorists'. Scarin' reporters is bad PR, and since Quatre's on L1 right now..." He stopped dead as he finally caught sight of their destination. "Howie…?"

Howard coughed, hiding a wince at the suddenly frosty tone in the teenager's voice as they watched technicians crawl all over Duo's prized antique atmospheric fighter jet. "Um, yeah, R&D wants you to test out some kind of fancy new radar system. They were supposed to send you a memo about installin' it today…"

Duo sent him a horrified look and then rushed over to visit the wrath of the God of Death upon the incompetents messing with his baby.

-

"Ground Control, this is Three-Seven-Golf-Niner, requesting permission for take-off at this time, over," Duo muttered into his mike an hour later, flipping the ignition switches for the secondary engines.

"_Three-Seven-Golf-Niner, this is Ground Control_," a voice replied after only a few seconds. "_File flight plan with the tower this time, over_."

Duo pushed a button next to the screen embedded in his console. "Ground Control, flight plan on file, over."

"_Permission granted, Three-Seven-Golf-Niner. Taxi to Runway Four this time. Have a nice flight, Captain Maxwell_," the voice returned, breaking from its cool, professional tones for the last few words.

"Roger, wilco," the American said with a grin, waving for the techs below to pull the chocks out from in front of his wheels. With nothing left to hold it back, the jet began to slowly pull out of the hangar.

"Ne, Howard? What's the word on the new doohickey?" Duo asked, thumbing the mike over to his private channel.

"_The techs say it's working okay so far. They want you to test it on your flight to Fort Lakenheath, see how it performs at higher altitudes and speeds. And since it's you doin' the flyin', during high-gravity turns and general death-defying stunts like you always pull_," Howard answered, his voice a little tinny, and Duo made a mental note to mess with the speakers after he'd arrived.

"Seems like a lot of fuss for just a new radar system," he commented absently. The jet had nearly reached the designated runway, and he tugged on the seat restraints to make sure they were good and tight.

"_That's 'cause it ain't really radar they're using. This one's supposed to use high-frequency sound, not just too high for us to hear, but for dogs, bats, and basically anything that isn't a highly-advanced computer. And the thing is, the only systems that can read the return sound waves after they bounce off something are the ones tuned to that specific frequency. Anything tuned to the rest just gets a bunch of garbled noise_."

The pilot had to whistle. A sounding system like that… it wouldn't just be an improved radar, it'd be a whole new way to send messages, ones that couldn't be intercepted and read by the enemy. "There anything special they want me to do?" he asked.

"_No. It'll automatically be recording as you fly, so you just need to turn it over to the techs at Lakenheath to orgasm over_."

Duo laughed. "Got it. Call you when I get there, old man," he stated, as the jet at last taxied into position. "I'm outta here."

He punched a button, and with a scream and a roar the afterburners kicked him into the heavens.

-

Two hours into the perfectly standard flight and Duo was just entering French airspace, while outside his cockpit dusk was beginning to fall. If it hadn't been for the fact that he was flying, he would have said he was bored; he couldn't even pull out his braid to play with, confined as it was within the flight helmet. It was almost enough to make him wish for the days when every flight was made with the constant fear of being spotted by OZ.

Almost. Really almost. Even if it was kind of boring and he rarely got to play with explosives anymore, Duo liked peace. It was… peaceful.

Duo sighed. According to the flight plan it'd be another good hour and a half before he would be close enough to the base to turn off the autopilot and do some _real_ flying.

He broke more than a few rules when he decided to take a quick cat-nap. But according to all the programming, all the tests run, it should have been safe to leave the autopilot unsupervised and in charge, and really, Duo Maxwell broke most of the rules in the cosmos just by being there, alive and breathing. So what was a little half-hour nap in the big picture?

Well, it did mean that he wasn't awake to see the newly-installed Sound Detection and Ranging system suddenly light up like the old-time Fourth of July. He had no knowledge of the way the sodar had pinged its ultrasonic waves off of an unusual object far below. Nor of that object's reaction to being so pinged.

He was peacefully sleeping when the atmosphere in front of his jet shimmered and curled into multihued waves, and when the jet and its passenger passed into the strange shimmer.

It wasn't until they emerged on the other side, and an alarm began to scream as all power to the engines cut off, that Duo at last awoke. And by then, it was much too late for him to do anything but eject himself, seat and all, out into a completely unknown world.

-

Albus Dumbledore frowned and lifted his wand higher, demanding with a silent _Lumos_ that the light at its tip push back the darkness even further. The wards around Hogwarts had reported two separate breaches, and he had headed immediately for the nearer one after requesting that his Deputy Headmistress contact the Ministry for a team of Aurors if she had no word from him within the hour. He was nearly at the disturbance now, and just at the edge of the light he could see the beginnings of a deep furrow ploughed into the earth.

The trough was a long one, and at the end was a twist of metal he could only barely recognize as a muggle flying machine, though one unlike anything the wizard had ever seen before. He spent a few minutes poking around the wreckage and found nothing.

The second disturbance in the wards was a bit further on- about as far from the school as you could get and still be encompassed by the magic, in fact. This time there was no great gaping hole in the earth to herald its location; instead, a large piece of cloth dyed in red and white stripes shone vividly in his light from where it draped over a tree. Albus followed the lines that led off it to a legless, padded chair and the slender, unidentifiable figure it contained.

The Headmaster approached to within a few feet and called out to the stranger, but there was no answer. A simple diagnostic charm revealed that the muggle was breathing, but unconscious and injured; something Albus had already guessed, given that in his experience limbs weren't meant to bend in those places.

He knew better than to move the stranger. "_Petrificus Totalis_," he murmured, making sure to put as little power into the spell as possible. The Body-Bind Curse worked by spasming the muscles and locking them into place; when cast at full strength upon an already-injured person, it could cause irreparable damage instead of preventing more. The elderly wizard's next spell was on a bit of parchment taken from his pocket. It glowed briefly blue and shivered in his grasp as he reached out to touch it to the muggle's arm. He had just enough time before it activated to sever the lines connecting the seat to the cloth above.

Then the Portkey deposited them, seat and all, inside the Hospital Wing, and Madam Pomfrey was rushing over demanding explanations that Albus couldn't yet give. He quickly backed off, leaving the muggle- revealed to be a young man barely out of childhood after his helmet was Vanished- in the mediwitch's capable hands.

"Professor? Who is that?" a young voice asked from behind him, and the Headmaster nearly jumped out of his skin. He'd been so distracted by their unexpected visitor…

"I'm afraid I can't answer that question at the moment, Mr. Potter," he relied, turning around to see the Hospital Wing's only other patient. "And how are you feeling? That was quite a nasty blow you took from that Bludger."

Curious eyes stared at him from behind thick glasses, until their owner visibly pushed aside his questions for another time. "I'm feeling a lot better, sir. Poppy fixed the bone right up. Wouldn't let me go back to the Tower yet, though."

Albus gave a pleased sort of nod. "Of course. Though I do hope you'll be rather more careful in Quidditch from now on, my dear boy. I'm afraid Poppy rather detests the sport, given how often she has to treat its players. We wouldn't want to see her reaction should you end up in here again, would we?"

The fifth-year shook his head with a lopsided grin that Albus returned. "Now, then, I believe I will get some sleep," he announced. "I'd suggest you do the same if you want dear Poppy to release you in the morning, Mr. Potter."

"Yes, sir," the young wizard replied to the Headmaster's back. Obediently, but not without a sigh of irritation that his question hadn't been at all answered, he lay back down. If he turned his head just so he could see the busily-casting Madam Pomfrey and a bit of her new patient…

James Potter watched the mediwitch work late into the night.

* * *

A/N: So what does everyone think? The bunny hit and for once I didn't want to make it go away, so here it is. This is the first story in a trilogy; it will be much shorter than the other two and, as you can see, is going to be rather fast-paced compared to my usual writing style. And the number of stories I'm working on now scares even me, so this will be the last new novel-length story I work on before I finish another.

This will be slash, and Duo's pairing has been decided, but I'm not going to say what it is since it won't really appear until the second story, _No Enemy But Time_. There will be appearances by the other pilots sporadically through this, but they are not the main focus.

**Disclaimer:** I own neither Harry Potter, nor Gundam Wing, which is probably a good thing. I could never decide how to mix and match the pairings… _Trading Boyfriends_, anyone?

24 October 2006


	2. Wake

**Warnings and Disclaimers:** Slight manipulation of canon. Oh, and consider Dumbledore to be asexual for all interactions with the students, please.

* * *

Three heads popped up to look at him as he stepped through the portrait hole, their owners the common room's only occupants at the early hour. "James!" Sirius exclaimed, jumping to his feet. "About time the old girl let you out. Moony was complaining about taking another day's worth of notes for you."

Remus had risen more slowly, and now he flushed and ducked his head as James glanced in his direction. "I don't mind, really," he protested quietly.

James gave him a quick grin. "I'm just glad it's you doing it and not one of these two," he replied, jerking his head towards Sirius and Peter behind him. "I'd fail everything. And who says Poppy let me out?"

With that said, he dashed towards the stairs, his goal firmly in mind. By the time his surprised friends had caught up with him, he was digging around inside his trunk. "Sneaking out was easy enough, because Poppy was busy with another patient. Girl our age, hurt really bad. I'd have been out last night, really, except I had to wait for Dumbledore to stop hovering over her."

"One of the other students?" Peter asked, perching on the edge of his bed.

James shook his head. "No way. I'd know hair like that. Gorgeous hair… not as beautiful as Lily's, of course," the other three mouthed the 'of course' along with him, well-used to his desperate crush on his fellow prefect, "but still really nice."

"Sounds interesting," Sirius said, grinning. "Get her name?"

"What do you think I'm doing now?" James frowned. It wasn't inside his Transfiguration textbook where he'd left it… "All right, who's got the Map?"

"Me," Remus replied, briefly disappearing behind his bed curtains. "I wanted to try adding a couple of classrooms."

His wand out, James took the bit of parchment and tapped it. "Marauders. Did it work?" he asked as lines began to darken and expand into a primitive map of Hogwarts. Sirius and Peter jostled each other for the space to peer over his shoulders.

"Mostly. I had some trouble getting it to accept the Charms classroom, probably because of all the ambient magic in there. We might need to tweak the parameters more, like we did for the Great Hall and the hospital wing." Remus frowned as he watched the lines seem to stutter, then slow to a crawl. "And the basic structure needs reweaving. I think the classrooms put too much strain on the power matrix."

James bit the inside of his mouth to keep from smiling. All three of them were convinced that Remus was a genius- especially when it came to charms and jinxes- but a childhood full of prejudice against the young werewolf had left him without the self-confidence he needed to truly let that show. They did what they could to shore him up, but anything to obvious just made the Gryffindor blush and retreat back into his shell.

At last the lines formed into the walls of the hospital wing James had just escaped, with two dots inside: one labeled 'Poppy Pomfrey', and the other, oddly faded, read 'Duo Maxwell'.

There was a long moment of silence. "Duo," Sirius finally said. "Odd name for a girl."

"Maybe she's American?" Peter offered. "I heard they have weird names over there."

"Dunno, maybe. Close," James ordered, tapping the parchment again with his wand. It wasn't a good idea to keep the Map going too long; they still hadn't figured out how to either cut down on the energy it used, or tie it to an external power source. Just before the lines faded out entirely, he thought he saw a dot labeled 'Albus Dumbledore' step inside the hospital wing.

-

Nothing hurt. That was... strange. Duo was used to being in severe pain whenever he woke up in a place he didn't recognize. Especially when said place had white walls, beds with white linens, and to his regrettably extensive experience screamed 'hospital'.

The teenager lay perfectly still in his bed, with only bare slits of violet showing to indicate he was awake. He could hear the sounds of someone moving around: a quiet rustling of cloth, and once the clear, bright _clink_ of glass tapping against glass. It wasn't long before he heard whoever it was move towards him with brisk, efficient footsteps, and Duo quickly shut his eyes again.

It was a woman, he decided after a moment. Not Sally Po- her movements were too unfamiliar- but whoever she was, she had that same feeling of "I'm going to help you get better if I have to kill you to do it." Duo was starting to suspect that he wasn't in any danger, even if he couldn't quite bring to mind whatever had happened to leave him in a hospital. If nothing else, he could count on the nurse, doctor, or whatever to protect him from anyone who tried to bug him before he was fully healed.

A door opened, but with the woman still hovering over him Duo couldn't open his eyes to see who it was. "Ah, Poppy!" he heard a man's voice call out in a distinctive British accent. Upper-class, too, if he was any kind of judge. "How is your patient this evening?"

"Better than he was when you brought him in, Headmaster, but he's not leaving that bed for another few days," the doctor replied in a tone that was about as inflexible as gundanium. "I've healed his broken bones, but I want to keep an eye on his spleen. Those don't always heal correctly after rupturing, and I'll need to catch any complications before they get too far along."

Inside, Duo was cringing. In almost two years of war, he'd never been hurt even half that badly. What the hell could have gone so wrong as to mess him up so seriously?

And how long had he been lying in hospital to be so fully healed?

"Will he be out much longer, do you think? In these times, perhaps it would be best for him to be on his way quickly."

A hand brushed aside his bangs and covered his forehead. Duo only just controlled his flinch of surprise. "The fever from the potions is nearly gone. I'd expect him to wake within the hour."

Duo knew he'd have to 'wake up' eventually if he wanted any kind of answers. He didn't seem to be in any danger, given how much effort his hosts must have put into healing him; yes, he knew she might have listed fake injuries for him to overhear, but assuming that they knew he was awake and were already trying to manipulate him reached a Heero Yuy-level of paranoia that Duo had vowed to stay far away from. It was awfully tempting to twitch then, to prove her right, but the ex-pilot suppressed the urge. It'd be too much of a coincidence, fun as it'd be.

Under his breath, he started counting to six hundred and sixty-six. He'd start with the groaning and the usual 'just woke up' motions then.

-

Albus decided, as he matched stares with their guest, that it was well past time to replace the chairs in the hospital wing. Poppy might insist that uncomfortable chairs meant fewer people bothering her patients for long periods of time, but sitting in one for what would likely prove to be a delicate conversation wasn't doing his back a lick of good.

"I trust you're feeling better, child?" he ventured as his opening gambit, while sipping the tea he'd had a house elf bring in, the little being popping quietly into an out-of-the-way corner that was out of the young man's sight.

The muggle's eyes narrowed at the word 'child'- and such odd eyes they were, too! At first glance one would label them simply as a medium to dark blue, but continued observation would add in the tinges of lighter color that made them nearly purple. There was wariness in those eyes, which didn't surprise the wizard. Waking up in a strange place in the middle of a war (though a muggle couldn't be expected to know that, really) without being suspicious would have made him much more uneasy.

"That depends. Better than what?" the boy finally answered, and his American accent really _was_ a surprise.

"The, ah, vehicle you were in crashed, I'm afraid. You were a bit dinged up. Is there any lingering pain?" As Albus watched, recognition finally flared in those interesting eyes.

"My jet… is it…"

There was a palpable dread in his voice, and Albus felt true regret as he shook his head. "I'm afraid I don't know much about flying machines, but I don't believe it's repairable."

The boy slumped, grief flashing over his face. "Damn… spent so much time working on that thing to get it airworthy again…"

"I'm sorry for your loss. And I apologize, I haven't introduced myself. My name is Albus Dumbledore, and I am the Headmaster of the school you are currently residing in." The wizard bowed slightly from the waist.

His guest stared at him for a long minute, and then finally nodded. "Duo Maxwell."

Albus clapped his hands, pleased, and ignored the way the boy jumped at the sound. "Excellent! Since you seem to be suffering no ill effects, where might we send you off to, Mr. Maxwell? I'm sure you're eager to be getting home."

Maxwell winced. "Oh, man, the guys are never going to let me live this down… can't believe I crashed on a routine flight, after all the hair-brained stuff I pulled during the war." He sighed and looked up at the wizard, who had frowned at the child's last sentence. _During_ the war implied that it was already over, and he'd heard of no such war in the muggle world. "If you contact the Preventors they'll send someone to come get me."

"I beg your pardon, but… who might these Preventors be? I've never heard of them." It sounded rather like a government agency, but could easily have been the name of a business as well, and Albus rarely ventured out into muggle territory. They always stared so.

The boy gave him a startled look. "You guys must be pretty isolated out here. I know we haven't been around long, but we're in the news a lot. I know we are, 'cause I usually have to be in the damn press conferences. Do you know how boring those are? Well, boring and annoying, because the reporters-"

Albus pointedly cleared his throat, and Maxwell flushed. "Right. Um, we're a counter-terrorist agency. Paramilitary and all that. Lady Une founded us after the Colony Wars to prevent any more from happening, hence, you know, the name."

The Headmaster frowned again. "I should think that if these Preventors were founded after the American Colonies seceded, they've been around for rather a long time. That was nearly two hundred years ago, after all."

The muggle snorted. "What history books have you been reading? The American Revolution was _six_ hundred years ago. I think. School kind of took a back seat, whenever I actually attended one."

"My dear boy, that's quite impossible. My father used to tell me stories-"

Albus found himself interrupted as the Fat Friar came gliding through the doors of the hospital wing, wringing his hands in worry. "Headmaster! You really must come quickly. Several of the Ravenclaw children are stuck to the ceiling, and no one can bring them down!"

The wizard began to reply to his longtime acquaintance, and then caught himself as he recalled that his guest was a muggle and would no doubt wonder why his host was chatting with thin air. That would undoubtedly cause concerns about his sanity, which would make it difficult to correct the strange ideas the lad had about history. Albus turned to apologize for the lapse of his attention, and then to make his excuses so he could leave to sort things out, but was astonished to see Maxwell's eyes riveted on the ghost.

"Holy shit…" Maxwell breathed, shock and awe warring over his face, and the wizard found himself sighing.

Well, didn't this complicate matters.

* * *

A/N: Expect this first story of the trilogy to be rather rushed. It's really just introductions and setting up the real story, which will be in the second and third parts. For now, I'd appreciate any comments/critiques on my characterization of the Marauders. I've written adult!Sirius and Remus before, but never their younger selves, and never James or Peter.

In regards to canon: it's stated somewhere that the Marauders created the Map during their sixth and seventh years, but I'm taking the position that the Map is a work of genius and would have taken much longer than that. They began it in this year, their fourth, but it doesn't have much to it yet. They also haven't yet set it to that wonderful password. Oh, and as in all my stories, muggles can't see ghosts, so draw your own conclusions from that last bit.

* * *

19 November, 2007


End file.
